March 4, 2026 – Finance Committee – Video & Transcript

March 4, 2026 - Finance Committee

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We have a quorum, so I will call the meeting to order. This meeting is being recorded and will be made available to the public on WACAM as soon as possible after the meeting. Pursuant Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in person and via remote access in accordance with applicable law. One may watch or participate remotely with the meeting link to be found at www.weyland.na.us slash public body meeting information, virtual, in-person, and hybrid, all of which is hyphenated. You can find that URL by clicking on the calendar tab on the town's homepage, clicking on today's date, and clicking on the finance committee. When required by law or allowed by the chair, persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participating in the meeting may do so at the person or remote access. Do we have anybody on call besides April? Yes, I do see some of their handrails. ...is on the agenda. Are there public comments and responding? We've deleted more articles and voted on them tonight. And then at roughly 8 o'clock, we'll have the budget, particular emphasis on the capital budgets, and discuss with the manager and or finance director at AFC. Are there any public comments? Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Okay, good. Can you see me? No. Okay. For some reason, that doesn't seem to be working. I just have a few questions left over from the last meeting, if you don't mind. Can you simplify yourself first, please? Oh, I'm sorry. My name is Jim VanSkyber. I'm from Holiday Road. Okay. The questions I have, the first question is, is it true that the final budget that will be presented at town meeting includes a $400,000 deficit? No. No. No. Okay. So I misheard that then. So then is the town, is the budget presented at town meeting actually a balanced budget? Yes. I think the $400,000 number that you're referring to has to do with the snow. Perhaps that you heard us discussing, which would have been for last year's numbers, not For fiscal 26. For fiscal 26. Correct. Not fiscal year 27. And then I think if you, depending on what you heard, Brian County also spoke to sort of how we would deal with that as well. Okay. Great. Thank you. Last question is, the budget that's presented to town meeting, that does not include any additional spending that might be approved at town meeting? Correct. I mean, if someone were to bring up an amendment at town meeting, obviously we haven't incorporated that because we wouldn't be aware of. Or any articles that include additional spending that have not yet been voted on? The omnibus budget is separate from the articles. Okay. Great. Okay. Thank you. That's all the questions I had. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. Iris, you know how to present? I had one that's remaining and I wanted to have a quick conversation on it. Okay. So the remaining article I had is related to the sell or transfer of vehicles. I still haven't gotten the full list. I would like to make a motion that we consider that one, no financial impact, which was what was recommended by Brian Keveney. We had had a conversation about it. I, in fact, actually had advocated for keeping it because I do like providing the details. But I think we could, we can still vote on it even if, I mean, I think we could still vote on it even if we don't have a complete list. We have a sense of what you reviewed and what the vehicles they've noted to date. I think, you know, especially the, it's not going to be a really a financial implication. Right. Right. We can vote with what you have. Okay. I don't have anything to send out to you all. But right now they had sent, I can look and see they had sent a couple of things from the fire department and nothing further. So I don't, sorry, I don't know how you want me to make the motion, but effectively, I mean, I don't think we've historically had any concerns, right? It's really more of a procedural matter than it is a. Well, I think just bring Rosanna at the next meeting. Okay. Sounds good. I think it'll be a quick one too. Okay. Sounds good. And that's what I will do. Other than that, I think all of mine that, Bill took one for me. So he's got all set. And then. Thank you for, you gave me one that they ended up holding. So thank you. That's a nice one to take. Excellent. And then article KK, which I will cover for you. Thank you. Carl. So that one I saw, you said that today, right? Like that, that's. It just came in. Brand new as of just today. Okay. All right. So then KK, I will plan also to present hopefully by Monday for folks. So those are the two remaining for me, KK and Elle. But everything else I think you should have for me, right, Pam? I will double check on that. Okay. There are a few that I need to still. No problem. Do a final check on it and submit. I have. I still have the enterprise article. I just got some questions answered and kind of incorporated all that today. It's a bit of a longer article. Just an explaining just in that it's the three enterprise funds, water, wastewater and transfer station. And when you look at the article language itself, it's, it's not many numbers, but it's $9 million. And in the writeup, I kind of review a little bit more on each budget piece. I didn't, I haven't sent that along yet, but I think I will send that to you and then we can review that probably Monday. Sounds good. So people have a little more time to look at it. Unless you want to look at it now and I could kind of talk through it and then you have a sense of it, whichever. If you think that would be helpful and you're prepared to. Yeah, I can do that. Sure. And I just, I noticed my computer. I think I thought it was plugged in at my desk and I don't think it was actually plugged into the wall. So it may die. So I will do the same with them later. Sorry, while you do that. Sure. I should read an article. Okay. Do you know the proposers for this article? Do they cite their sources for all of this data? I have no idea. Okay. I don't care on that. So that should have just. Mailbox. That should have just taken your mailbox. Okay. Sorry. So this is, this is article E, the enterprise fund budget. As you can see, it's laid out for the water enterprise fund. It shows each of the three prior years and the proposed for fiscal 27. So the water fund total budget is $6,246,000. Then wastewater, if you look above, it's the sum of two and three. So it'll be funded by the revenue, wastewater revenue, and then wastewater retained earnings. So that 815 and 320 comes out to what's in the, the big box in the middle, 1.1 million, 136,000. And then finally the transfer station. What's in the box. So the 637,983 is composed of the, um, transfer station revenue, 456 plus the certified retained earnings. And then the subsidy, the $50,000 subsidy general fund, um, 50,000. And then below, and this is new in the past. In the past, the enterprise fund budgets were part of the big omnibus budget. Then we broke it apart so that the, just the revenue, the operating sections were part of an article. And then the capital was part of the omnibus budget. So now, and I think this probably makes sense. The whole, everything related to the enterprise fund, the operating and the capital are all together in one article. So, uh, capital for is broken out here too. So it's water enterprise fund total of 1.37 million and the wastewater enterprise fund, um, a hundred 25,000 for a total of 1.495 million. And so what I've done below is to give a little bit more detail on what's happening here. So if you look at the first section, um, and I've done it by enterprise funds. So water enterprise fund, the fiscal proposed 27 operating budget of 6.2 million is 1.37 million 28, almost 28% higher than the approved 26 budget. So that's a pretty big jump. And then I went through to try to show you what that $1.3 million increase is composed of. So primary drivers is the increase in debt service, 1.1 million, and then on down the line. Um, so I won't go through all the detail right now, but I just want to give you a sense of kind of what I did for each, um, and then explaining that. So that's sort of the cost of that enterprise fund. And then the next paragraph on this one, the increase in the budget will be funded through rate increases and PFAS charges in fiscal 27. And just on its own, this is likely to be 20%, about 25% higher than 26 rates. Um, and you know, obviously the water rates will continue to increase in 28 and 29 and thereafter, uh, with the, some of the new debt we have on and really most significantly from the MWRA, 30, 38.6 million. Um, and then I went on to just review, look at the capital. Um, you know, this is just the 1.37 million. This does not include the, the, the big slug that's in the article. Um, okay. Okay. I do. Um, and then I went through for, for each the wastewater, the same thing. Um, wastewater operating wastewater capital and then transfer station. There's a little bit more on that just because it gets it's, we're using some retained earnings and the subsidy from town. And then the new addition as Brian touched on the other night, transfer station this year will now be charged for indirect expenses. So sort of that sort of the town expenses, um, like Brian's time or whatever that's allocated. So that 81,000 is being now charged to the transfer station. It's sort of like the transfer stations, um, getting a $50,000 subsidy, but then 81,000 is being charged back to, is going back to town. Um, so just to kind of make that clear. So anyway, that's, that's what that article is. And we can, I'll let you have more time. Maybe we vote Monday unless. I'd prefer to vote over something. Yeah. I think we should do that. There's a lot. So I just wanted to kind of give you the overview. You can look at the details. Please let me know what questions you have and we can. Do you want a question now? Sure. Okay. I was just reading the arguments opposed and it said the level of services provided by the town should be reduced to reduce costs to residents, which, you know, any idea what those levels of services reductions would be? In other words, to me, it seems like you have to do all of this. But if in fact there's a way of not doing it by just reducing services, what would that be? Yeah. I think that's sort of a standard argument opposed. And I really don't have an answer to you on how you would cut that. I mean, I guess. Like there's a water main that needs replacing. It's like you're not going to just not replace it. And I guess I understood a lot of the increases, Pam, are for things we've already voted for, right? In the increases in repayments for debt services. Well, yeah. For things we've already incurred these expenses. There's no... Right. The best you could do is to say we won't take on any more. Right. But... So, you know... I guess if you... I don't know in what scenario. Right. You know, someone said, I will only vote for a budget that's whatever, 10% less. Right. Someone would have to figure out. And I don't know what changes would be made to try to fit that budget. Yeah. I mean, you may want to think about wording and so that that is addressed, but... Yeah. Okay. It's like nothing, nothing. And can I ask maybe a question you might know, because, Pam, I know you're enjoying this a lot longer than the rest of us, but the subsidy to the transfer station. Mm-hmm. What is the history around that? So, like, obviously this year, really, it's negligible because at the end of the day, the transfer station has to pay their own bills so they will get a charge back to the town, right? Like, essentially that, like, they will pay then the town or costs incurred specifically to them. So the subsidy effectively, I mean, I guess it's still subsidy of $50 million. Right. But like, what's the... Is that because the transfer station cannot afford to operate without that subsidy? Right. So this is... The story has been that, yes, the transfer station hasn't been... Profitable. Profitable. Yeah. Or it hasn't been, you know, it hasn't been meeting expenses with the sticker revenue and the bulky waste or whatever that we're being charged for. Right. Well, I mean, it's always, you know, it's not like... You just want it to... It leads to be flat... To match, like... Right. Expenses matching here. It's not really meant to be a for-profit. Right. Although it's nice when they're return backs. Now, there have been some retained earnings. So, in effect, since they have been getting a subsidy, I think it was... Since they were made an enterprise fund, I think people wanted to see, okay, how is this department operating? Not department, but this, I don't know, business, whatever you want to call it. Right. So you can... Things are a little bit more transparent. I believe, and I have to look back to be specific, but I think this happened maybe four years ago. Initially, they got a $75,000 subsidy. They got another $75,000 subsidy. Last year, it was $50,000. And this year, we're looking at $50,000 again. So, there's retained earnings of... And I have to look back, because that seems a little light now, because that's... That would be $150,000 and then $250,000. I thought there was a... I thought Brian said there was total retained earnings of about $300,000. So, it would seem at some point that they actually... But I thought that included an infusion of cash for the new compactor. Am I wrong there? Yeah, but they should have... That should have been expended for the compactor. Okay. So... It's okay. Anyway, it's sort of borderline. There's some other discussion, too, that... So, it looks as if it's not profitable, but then they do have retained earnings. So, maybe some of those subsidies... We're just building the retained earnings. We're using some retained earnings, as you can see in this article, to fund $131,000, to fund the operation, as proposed for fiscal 27. But the other issue is that the Department of Public Works has said that... Or the Board of Public Works has noted, and they both have agreed, that there's about $60,000, at least, in costs when they pick up the waste from the schools and from the parks and whatnot, that could be sort of charged back to the town that they're burying right now. So, it's a little bit harder to say whether they're actually... Operating or profitable or... Okay. Or neutral. You know, cost neutral, shall we say, right? Right. So, really, I think that's... I guess I could speak for myself. Like, that's really all my expectations would be, right? Is, could they get too open by rent or cost neutral, right? Right. Or is there even an opportunity... Even if they run in a slight subsidy, is there an opportunity to reduce that subsidy? Because I think... And I suspect the public thinks, when they go to buy trash bags, that that's how... Right? That plus the stickers is probably paying for it. It does. That covers a lot of it. It's a large... Sure. A lot of the revenue. I think there's... Sure. Also, you pay additional... There's other stuff. Programs for electronics or bulky waste, that kind of thing. But that's... Okay. So, tough to say. Okay. Thank you for sharing. I'm also... Just on that subject, I'm... There's a little working group, because in... I think it was last year, the town agreed as part of the omnibus budget to fund a $58,000 dollar study of the transfer station to look at transfer station operations and also consider, could the town do a curbside pickup service, and how much would that cost? And so, it's kind of... That's in the process right now. Great. So, I actually attended a meeting yesterday, which was reviewing the process, and it'll be sent a survey in the near future, and I don't know, the next month or so. So, we'll fill that out to get a sense of who uses the transfer station. If not, why not? What other services do you use? Get a sense of what people are being charged if they use private services and whatnot. So, that kind of is a tangent, but all related to transfer stations since you asked about the subsidy. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. That's very, actually very helpful. Thank you. It's just subsidizing personally. We would take her up on that. We would take her up on that, girl. At this meeting, people are passionate about their trash. It's very interesting. And I feel the same way. I love the transfer station. And then, if I'm understanding this correctly, if the article, so right now, the enterprise fund for the water enterprise fund includes the debt service for the part of the MWR connection that was already voted for, correct? What did we already vote for? Didn't we already start on design? I think some of the design is already included, right? And so that would have been... Right. And so, when the 30.6, is that for the latest December? Yes. It'll also start, it'll also eventually come under here, correct? Exactly. I just want to make sure I understand how it will flow in the future. Yeah, so that's like, when you read the write-up, you'll see that, so we did just issue bonds, as Brian said, in November. We issued $8 million in water fund debt. Yep. And that was for, I don't know that we had not issued for a while, but it was for what we'd approved at the 23, 24, and 25 town meetings. Okay. So we kind of had waited on a bunch of that, and it was just issued. So all of a sudden, we get the big service. Okay. So... But the big number will end up falling into this water. And the big... That's like big number. That's how we'll see it. Okay. Thank you. It's proposed now through the water, so... Perfect. Great. Thank you. Just want to make sure I can... That's it on the side. The articles? Are we waiting? Should we even take a vote on that article? I think we're going to wait until Monday. I'll let everyone read it, because it is a big article. Okay. It's $9 million. I just have the one left from you, and as I mentioned in the email, the write-up you did, it looks fine. It's a matter, there's some blanks to fill in that Carol is still working on. Okay. The waging... That wage study is... It happened, or it might be happening right now. Okay. And I'll get... I talked to Carol a few days ago, I'll get back and find out where we're... But that's the only one I have outstanding right now. But nothing to present tonight. This is the second... I forgot minutes. So... I did look at the minutes, and I actually looked at the minutes, and I had... A bunch of changes that I sent to April. Do you want to walk through them? I think there's some... I can kind of... I think there's substances. Yeah. Okay. So... This paragraph on the first page, we're talking about the healthcare, retiree funding. In the third line, do you have any clarified funds? Retiree health... Okay. I just... The end of sentence. I said estimated by 2047. That's nice. Because we don't know. It's a moving target. On the second page, top paragraph, it was the whole discussion about the actual versus proposed tax as the base, 26 tax. So, in the second line, at the end of the line, they identified that actual tax numbers for 26 were... It should be lower than the approved amount, leading to a higher year-over-year tax increase than if compared to the 26 proposed. Just to make that clear. Substantive... In the third paragraph that begins, the group continued reviewing various town departments. I just had at the end of the line... In the middle. Becoming explained... Or blah, blah, blah. Becoming explained would need to be covered by transferring funds from other... This is about the snow... From other departments. Though this would reduce free cash available in 27, fiscal year 27. So, just adding that on to the end. Not necessarily reduce cash right now, but there won't be a turn back this year. So, we won't have this free cash next year. So, is it available in 27? So, that would reduce free cash available in 27. Normally, you'd have that much more of a turn back, and then that's free cash for 27 once it's certified. And then the other thing there was, at the end of that line, I just did a new sense. I said, as with other schools in town, the nurses' position at TCW is funded through the Board of Health budget. I think all the nurses are funded through the Board of Health, because the way it was written there, I just want to make it clear. It's not any different than the other public school nurses. Yeah. The next... Sorry. This is like the next line. The group continued budget discussions, including the reduction in debt service. It's not debt reduction. It's not debt reduction. In 27. And we can explain the bonds that we know of. I don't know if there is debt reduction here. Explain the bonds are typically, I think it should be, are typically issued in November, with interest paid in November. Or, paid in June in November. Pam, are you intending to send out? I sent, I sent, I sent this to April. Yes, and then, I don't think there was... I just kind of fixed up the discussion about the Transparency... I didn't know how much is the renewal. great yes and then i don't think there was i just kind of fixed up the discussion about the transfer station on the bottom with kind of what i just clarifying the eighty one thousand dollar in direct payment and oh and then sort of the last line of that big paragraph it said whether the wayland high school baseball field capital project be included in the omnibus budget was discussed because it just the fields the fields project omnibus budget it just it i just thought it sounded clear anyway and then the facilities break down on it was custodian up to use and
motion to approve the minutes as amended second all there okay we need a roll call vote yes yes yes yes zero we're going to discuss in the i sent her the email to us today which is we have an extra day to get all this stuff done if necessary march the 16th change as far as i'm concerned the weekend until monday so we still have per se but it's but i never hoped either it's not about what we will start looking at on monday basic plan is i've reorganized a lot of it i like the model is i think it's a step too far in fell swoop starting from a even you see it emergency duty i know this was expected well this is a team sport and i really appreciate all that you or yeah but you got the ball so you're the one putting it in the hoop that was passed so that's that um i think the next item on the agenda technically starts at around eight but these are approximate times so we'll be joined i believe last week or sorry monday i had one update um so i'm not sure folks saw but frank and me shared a response from the t director around the expenditures i did send a reply back saying that at least on my heard i did not question the authenticity of the request but more so was looking for an understanding of what was in each group and asked yeah i asked for an advice list which he did provide to me but i saw no one else was cc'd on that so um i'm happy to share yeah so just that way yeah please do because i think my point here is i just want to make sure there's a redundancy and and um and while i realize you know the numbers are not millions and i'm no one is at all suggesting that something untoward is happening mistakes do happen and this is part of our job here or our role is just to make sure that we understand what's in each bucket so um i was district seven eight thousand i agree completely they add up to a half dollars correct and they weren't none of that was in the capital right so it's all i knew i know i appreciate your support because i i was worried that perhaps not that i'd overstepped but that no that's totally reasonable i had the same reaction when i when i read it it was just like okay i qualitatively all make sense correct what you'd expect but of course we were i think we're asking we just want to know what a better understanding on the others yep the other interesting sort of first spots from the it director as well is that or at least in terms of the hardware um i guess they're experiencing volatility in hardware pricing which i chips i assume i assume it has to do with makerships or tariffs right like it could be a number of things i'm not honestly sure even though i thought tariffs were excluded from or hardware i thought a lot of hardware was excluded from tariffs but what day is it um correct correct um so he did say that their the numbers could move i think is what i interpreted okay
well i assume it would mean that they would just buy whatever they can within the budget correct and that and then they would have to come back another year and say we need more right yeah that's what i think a little bit over and another i assume it's something like that but i thought that was interesting that he called that that he was concerned about volatility i mean if if we found out about it if he was certain within the next week i think that's it we're not talking about spending that money right exactly so you know for months right right so there'll be no certainty on that unless you contract um since we have 20 minutes camp would it would it be okay if we look at the furniture and just look at since we haven't yeah someone has anything maybe that's like a good activity for us let me capital one let me send out i think just like seeing the latest like where do all the articles stand um and this is not you're going to see i need to refresh this i will send out what i have sure i would say too when people have um any articles before you they're fine i'll just make sure that that you have signed off with the the petitioner and your select board liaison sometimes occasionally people have comments it seems like the slack board has just been going straight through with what we've presented to ours you had a couple yes carl you had a couple as well yeah two seconds after you're not right and i haven't bill i had a question on yours article p the reaffirmed remote participation at town meeting yeah we had so you have a whole write-up so we'd agree that that one was like a non-financial right this was the uh participation at town meeting remote participation yeah there's no financial right right well you did there's a whole write-up there there's a whole fincon comments and arguments for and arguments posed and what you sent so shouldn't have been yeah let me pull up my first maybe i sent you a wrong version i'm not aware i got an old version or something take a look at that i'm looking i'll pull it up again because there's a patient p i sometimes have trouble with versioning and i may have sent you an old version three two oh yes the second 29 a.m yeah you're right it shouldn't okay it must be it must be last year's version or something and i'm not sure how that happened do you have another do you have the i will i will find it yeah because i was curious i was like well if all this is in here maybe we should vote it good good good catch yeah i'm sorry about that that's okay so you did receive my old head which i said i did okay perfect flagged flagged too let me know if i've missed anything um well if each everyone should know you know for your own articles if they were old or not so if if you would look at your articles and just make sure that i haven't missed anything i just crossed out the so right now i just have wxaa first then you've got my spad
there should i not put it in article m but i just don't see finals oh okay yes just let me know if you need to simply send it okay and let that go so that was sent wednesday okay there's a well and you need it that's we're seeing that i think no but it hasn't been formally we'll wait till it's right it hasn't been formally pulled uh i won't double check i think someone told me it was pulled okay i see what happened i had it taken out of my initial version and then tom face sent me uh here's the final version i figured he took mine and changed his stuff but he apparently put that stuff back in back so i didn't i didn't proof what tom sent me i assumed he wasn't changing my comments i will i will go back and reaffirm it well but just check with him on i mean so if if fincom has said there's no financial impact and we're not going to do a report right which is what i told you have 150 words right so yeah if you want to put it back to him to say yeah i didn't realize i just forwarded you what he sent me i just looked at it and i was like this looks like a full report so no you're right i'm not sure why he sent me what he did so i will i will run that down probably last year's or he did yeah i don't maybe he sent me the wrong version but anyway i i didn't prove it before i said it to you that's okay are we there um can you borrow yes here's right it okay s and t uh yeah okay so there's still a work in progress yeah okay and yours allow you know what there was something we didn't we said that that was a non-financial there was a reason i had i think i it was the the way that i proposed the language to doug and he i didn't need to confirm with him i think they voted it they select board did vote it i need to just follow up with him to just say this is final and it's going in z did get pulled right it did general stabilization fund oh yeah to fund yes yeah i see it it just has a question mark that i'm fairly calm and then rob for dd that is going to come to us i mean my ping bill on it again okay like i said i think the the school select board is trying to work with the school committee to incorporate to basically have a version of this that they're both happy with got it okay um and i think that's still a bit of a working process okay i don't know if you saw the the school committee the school committee actually just sent out a better life document with potential visions for the whalen school buildings over the next like 50 years that you know a number of which consider using this site in ways that were not originally in this article so i think the expectation is still that it will be in but there's not probably something they might i just i'm waiting for okay you got it there's i think uh that was the cpa yeah um just to to come back quickly on that one you'd asked about i mean what happens if you didn't do ten percent of rob it outside yeah for the three required it is the law for the cpa fund so when i went to the um cpc chair we're not gonna comply with the law i mean it yeah so i i i'm not gonna do a what if article on that just it's you know what if we don't comply with any other law i i don't think i guess we should really get into that i guess the only reason i bring it up is then it's kind of a weird maybe it's the standard article that it is every year but i just mean like if the law says we must do a thing why is the town voting on whether we should do the thing or not because a different law says we have to vote on it that just seems it seems i mean it seems very i think the same thing about the sell and trade vehicles a little bit of like if if it's we're always going to vote yes because they need to sell and trade these vehicles than my standard but they don't need to right like we could i guess you could just say we could like what you would do otherwise here's your broken vehicle that sits on you just leave it somewhere right like there is an option to just like i guess i for me there's a difference between like things that are obvious and make sense versus like things that were legally required to do right like the old white should the town follow the laws i don't know never mind i mean it's not your thing i mean we agreed and the town adopted to do the cpa yeah in 2002 so if that's part of what we've agreed to we need to comply with with the law that yeah set it up and i i i guess as a as a voter it is a little weird to me the idea that like you're asking me do you think yes or no but you have to answer yes because the law says yes is the only acceptable answer is like a weird proposition part of the voters but like if that's how it works that's how it works i mean i guess you could you could vote against it saying i don't like the way what you're proposing yeah or that you're setting aside you know if it if it if it were aside from the 10 percent requirements okay yeah i don't think this is uh important like this is how it's always been done yeah i feel like we're kind of splitting hairs on yeah yep on something that's kind of a standard procedure yeah that's fine um and then the other piece of that that i was waiting for is like there's a piece on um if it's greater than 36 months then it would go back to the uncommitted fund uh so i just asked for a list or how many um just sort of like count or dollars outstanding so i think that was the only they ended up pulling it it was the same bylaw the after three years oh yes hold that piece of it last year yes they did okay
so that was what i was waiting for good evening i got a bad cold tonight so you're with me tonight mike will be on momentarily again this discussion brian i've got a what i'm hoping is a really embarrassing question you've got you've got a million dollars in the budget 55.9 million dollars for the schools the school's recommended budget is 57.7 million dollars that as far as i know is still what's on their website um is there is the difference between those two accounted for in other pieces of the budget or have you not accepted the recommendation for the school carl are you asking me that question yes okay can you repeat that again sorry sure the in the budget we've been reviewing the school budget is 55.9 million dollars that's without allocations but that's what the budget number says and in the budget recommended by the schools that um powerpoint we got they're recommending 57.7 million dollars so almost two million dollars more right so the difference is that the difference is in the salary reserve account got it okay what point does that does that salary reserve account account if the teachers union um well there's numerous unions within the school once each one of the bargaining unions gets settled that money will be transferred at by town meeting vote from the salad reserve to the the respective um school budget right now there's a possibility that when we get to town meeting in may that between the time you print the warrant and the time we get to town meeting they enter into an agreement and there may be a motion on the floor to amend amend the budget simply by moving a certain sum of money out of salary reserve and placing that money into the school budget that's been done in the past the budget doesn't increase we're just reallocating the budget amounts i think i i started focusing on these numbers and a lot of other numbers as i'm trying to you know draft the report and i'm not sure i know what you're saying so i think in the past we've done um in i think brian's powerpoint uh presentation that did well it was on the budget um you can talk about the
the schools the increase including like it'll be it if they probably i'm assuming they don't settle um um and if they don't then you can say the school's budget increased x which is what you'll see and on an allocated basis you'd say meaning once that salary reserve is allocated to the school's line it will increase by x which is going to be a bigger amount whatever that difference is um because it's parsed out between the schools and the town departments that brings up a separate question is there in the in your budget workbook is there a i've seen the unclassified numbers right but is there anywhere in here that actually allocates them or is it allocated prorata or i mean you can see it like in that number the difference between like what the school proposed number and what brian has in his model that is the that that difference is is the school's allocation of that that part of the that difference will account for part of the reserve okay what's in the unclassified reserve and then the remainder goes to town but okay and that helps a lot okay very good uh maybe i'll let you know tomorrow once you let again i just corrected the article p and sent it to tom and copied you so we'll get a confirmation from him that it's right yeah thanks for flagging that i have no idea what's happened all right we've got uh two guests let's move on to capital how do you like to come to the adult table
the reason that phil and i've invited um both brian here to talk to you the capital budget and the differences between cipc's recommendation 60's recognition is in town i mean i i was not able to do a full reconciliation of every year but i focused on fy 27 in detail because i thought that would be your most yeah um so if robbie would promote me into the term i can do my story it doesn't show that i can share forward it to somebody if you wanna robbie you can't see me
because i'm i'm looking at everybody i'm not on the audio so it doesn't cause an issue but no do you do you want to send it i would take my computer i i wasn't charging when i thought i was so i'm not a good contestant but if you wanted to send it all right i'll send it to you um if i could just jump in is robbie there yeah yeah i'm here so mike michael mccall didn't get a link but he's going to try and zoom i'll log on to the zoom if if robbie could bring him in to the meeting i can bring mine um i'm gonna say that's a reminder to my committee so it doesn't actually say reconciliation
it says it's in 802 so you should get it soon sorry yeah i have it on my phone
are you on the internet here that's what i think i'm wrong right
i guess i'll go to guest i can start talking about it if it if it helps um so uh i tried to group and you'll see it in a minute i tried to group the reconciliation i do have every item listed um but i tried to group it so that we could talk about it um so there were three projects that funding was added for this is not things that were moved in or out years but there was funding added for um they totaled six hundred and sixty thousand dollars and that was um 431 000 and change uh adding back to give the full roads amount that was in the prior plan um that was which i believe when i was here last we talked about why we didn't do that there was ninety thousand dollars for an in-car computer replacement um i will say on that one for the police department that one was one that the police chief had requested for fy27 last year this year he put it in fy28 but forgot to take it out of fy27 so we had asked him if it was redundant and he had indicated yes it was redundant and he wanted it for fy28 obviously he's since retired um so my understanding is that that amount um if you look at the capital budget that brian provided it's in both years and my understanding was that it was only needed once but perhaps brian and and michael had a different understanding from from the police chief so i'm not sure that that needs to be there unless they have a different understanding for roads kelly because you're right we did talk about it last time but just so we can reiterate the reason for the discrepancy is because you all looked at historically what's been spent and capped at that amount as opposed to what history no no we looked at what um was in the balance of the road account um and also factored in chapter 90 money and did a rough estimate of what was what was left over and took that off of um the request that michael and brian may not agree with that logic and it may be flawed um but my concern and this was a concern kind of going back when i was on fincom pam may remember was there always seems to be a balance as we're replenishing there's still a balance right we never sort of fully use it up and that that made there may be good rationale for that in terms of leaving some extra in case something happens um but my concern was always sort of right borrowing earlier than you need to right uh sort of always being ahead of the cycle and so this was meant to be a one-time right drop down not a forever thing but just try to get us uh readjusted and did i misunderstand what you said earlier you know cipc has put that back in and so no no we didn't put anything all i did was so when you said put back in i am i am reconciling what we recommended to what they recommended okay so you still still was requested yeah so put back in means that michael and brian so we didn't change anything we're not intending to change anything because i feel we we fulfilled our charter and so this was the next step thank you just trying to to reconcile the differences okay um and then the third project was um an increase in the water main design and construction for dudley road that was requested at a million dollars tom holder tom holder sent a cost estimate that he had received after we had issued our report um for one million one hundred and seventy thousand dollars so there was an increase of one hundred and seventy thousand dollars which was reflected in michael and brian's recommendation we didn't necessarily have any sort of issue with that we just didn't have that information when we when we issued our report okay so those are the three items that total 660. um then there were likewise two items that mr mccall mr keveney pushed out um for a total of 660 000 um from one of those was 500 000 for the middle school rooftop air handling units and exhaust fans uh construction was pushed from 27 to 28 and the video monitoring and management system was 160 000 that was which was a it request was pushed from 2027 to 2031. i i'd have to defer to brian and michael on the rationale for for those two being pushed out versus others um our i can tell you our rationale for including them as i i recall the middle school rooftop i thought had to do with um other work coordinating with other work that was in for the middle school but i might be misremembering the video monitoring system i very much remember a discussion it it was originally requested in the five last year's five-year plan for fy 27 it was requested a number of years ago um and our discussion on that was given the incidents in town and i know it wasn't a town building that it happened at but given the incident last few years in town that you know how would we feel if there was a similar type incident at one of the public buildings without the monitoring system and so again michael and brian may have different understanding of what the needs are and what we've done already that we were privy to but that was the rationale for for 27 for that i'll pause there michael and brian want to add anything on those or if you guys have questions on those let me drink a water first
so i can jump in here so we got the report uh january 20th from uh the uh cipc and we met with all the department heads about what the group had recommended and coming out of that meeting um what we ended up doing was putting a lot of the items that we had in the four-year plan back into the plan that well they actually didn't leave our plan we put left them in the plan so we met with the department as they review what the cipc had done and um from those meetings we ended up adding more items that were already in the plan as i've said before and i think this group also had the same i don't know if it was the we certainly had frustration but there was a significant amount of new items asked that were never asked before and we also had to deal with that so i can i don't want to go through every single one of them but like for example kelly just talked about the middle school roof air handler so we met with michael feyer he agreed that he couldn't get to that project and wanted to move it out of here so maybe maybe things changed since um cipc met with him um but all of our changes were based upon discussions with the town department heads on these with with roads for example um it was in the plan at 831 000 cipc had it in at 431. if i look at the open roads right now 2024 of a 687 000 appropriation there's 133 000 left 100 fy 25 of a 726 000 there's 40 000 left um most of 26 is not spent i mean of the 756 um there's right now 641 but if you take a look at 24 and 25 road repair only 12 percent of the original appropriations are open and those projects typically do take a couple of years because you got a map in they're usually done in the good weather um in in you know in springtime summertime when they can get to them and things happen and they don't get to it but overall we see the you know the cycle of a road being anywhere from two to two and a half years so we didn't feel that tom holder was behind in the in the roads so we kept it in at the 831. i'm just going to give some examples like the h40 tom holder really wanted that uh in the plan so we put it to 370 we put it in the plan stormwater tom again one of the 250 000 in the plan which was already in the plan um kelly's group didn't have that i'm just looking at my sheet as i go down we did agree with kelly's group on the h11 and the h7 swap they swapped out in h h h um 17 um uh what do you call it uh dump truck and brought in two others so we totally agree with that uh those things happened the sherman's bridge which was in the plan that was um canceled uh road i'm sorry radio system upgrades it was in the rich plan previously at 125 000 the price went up to 275 and meeting with tom holder he really needed that those um that project in fiscal 27 i believe cibc cipc made it made moved it out one or two years so what what you see really is that um over the i mean i can get into the five-year totals if you want but with respect to 27 i think most of what the cipc had we had as well um not not 100 but the majority of what they recommended we had and we added more we also brought in 700 000 in surplus capital that also contributed to funding some of the projects um so what what you know i'll just add to what brian was saying what we were trying to do is take the recommendations from cipc go back and you know sit down with the individual department heads and see what those recommendations made sense that they could work with and then what else did they feel they needed that had previously been in the print plan and try and bring it in you know for instance the compressor for the public safety there's only one there michael feo wanted that so we we tried to use the recommendations as a base and then work back in what staff felt they they needed to get into the plan and that was primarily how we came up with the plan that you have from us i'm still i'm still really confused yeah the uh because i see on your table nine you know eight million two hundred sixty four thousand recommended versus the town's fourteen million seven sixty one yeah so far haven't yeah i was trying to get through it but um so you're correct we recommended and and i don't disagree with what michael and brian said so maybe try let me try at a high level for you we recommended 8.3 million they recommended 13.8 okay the first one thing we should probably just um the recommendation from cipc goes to me and then i make a recommendation to you so we were trying to incorporate as much of cipc's recommendations in when we made our recommendation to you just to remind folks how the how the recommendations flow they flow from cipc to me and then i work with mr kevin in the department heads and make a recommendation to you yeah i understood i just want to know the difference between the 8.3 and the 13.8 well i mean kelly would it be worthwhile just to discount out the um the enterprise ones and just because no we're at 12 too let me give five minutes to high level it and then add and i don't dispute the order is we make a recommendation to the town manager they make a recommendation to you i'm just trying to walk you from one to the other so that you know what the differences are um i broke these into into five categories okay the first two i just went over which was there were some amounts that changed went up right or were added all together that was a plus of 660 000 it was three projects there were two projects that got pushed out that was a minus of 660 so they balanced each other then there were
for lunar funding yeah so there were 10 projects that were pulled forward they totaled five and a half million dollars okay i'm gonna i'm i don't have to go through a few of them but i what i would say is the committee doesn't disagree that these could be pulled forward it's going to come down to the three things i think i told you i was here last time which is how much outstanding capital there is right the policies around capital spending our priority ranking and we can disagree on the exact priority that's fine and the fincom's comfort with the level of spending and i think that's the most important one right is can you give us some breakdown of the 5.5 yeah yeah yeah i can tell you two and a half two and a half two and a half of it is is the stadium okay right is the baseball field the rest two was the the rest of the rest of that category um is a water fund vehicle for 200 000 a number of sidewalks and roads at the schools um there's three different projects some equipment for dpw radio system and a and a h40 heavy equipment replacement and air conditioning um at the elementary schools and a public safety hvac both of which were mentioned in our report as things that if there was surplus capital available we definitely thought should go in so they they are mostly all 2.5 is the dominant one right that's the dominant difference okay at that point sorry it's looking at the chart the majority of the rest of it is also stuff that's just basically for like one year forward it's mostly stuff that it's mostly one year forward yes it's mostly 27 um pulled from 28 into 27 a couple that were further out um a few differences on where surplus capital was used as a funding source which again we said in our report if to the extent their surplus capital right you may be able to fit some more in so we don't necessarily have um right any concerns with that and i would say the difference from plan if you think about it broadly from the prior plan is there was a whole bunch of town building renovation projects in the neighborhood of five million dollars right so if you look at last year's plan what came out versus what's going in it's a field right it's uh a um septic right those are kind of what swapped did you have the septic in your we had it in we had it in but we took out call it these other roads and these other nine projects that were three to five hundred thousand dollars in order to offset that right um so that's the high level difference it really comes down to the field being the big one one of the big ones the remainder of the differences are just different funding sources which is a lot of surplus capital and a couple you know differences between um using capital stabilization or free cash and then the big one there the septic we had in as levy borrowing um the recommendation from the town manager is excluded borrowing we've talked about right the rationales there we don't necessarily disagree with excluded borrowing either um but we're trying to stay consistent with policy which i know there's some differing opinions on which is fine um so i think it really comes down to the field being one of the biggest ones um that probably more the most discussion but april i'm sure you can share the rest if you really want to see the detailed one by one um of the the key differences between the report so i have a couple questions i don't know if this would be for you or if it would be for brian and michael but one of the ones that you have listed as high priority is the middle school rooftop air handling unit and exhaust him i'm curious why we would take that one and push it out and have two sidewalk and driveway repairs one for middle school for 431 000 and then one for district-wide repair replacement of driveway sidewalk like why we wouldn't just balance that out so that we take care of a high priority thing and then still do what we need so i mean what brian and michael said is they talked to tom fea and he he felt that the the other projects were more important than that one we we ranked it high that doesn't mean everybody else did okay and i will say you know as far as process right going forward and i i told you guys before this is our first time doing it we were doing it on short time my preferred this didn't go the way i would have preferred that it went my preference would have been and i think it would have been more efficient if um the town manager and the finance director had been with us in the meetings with the department heads and we would have worked this out kind of on a consistent basis versus us than them um and i think in the past on fincom it's the opposite right it was less than than you guys so going forward prefer that we do that together and that as we're producing the report it's based on a consistent understanding we may disagree but we're based on the same consistent understanding hearing the same message um and i will say as was in our report there were a lot of changes in the request just from the initial submissions to subsequent submissions right absolute value was like 22 million dollars of things moving around so i'm not surprised that by the time the finance director and the town manager were talking to them there were additional changes or requests for differences i think if we if we change the process going forward we can likely be much tighter on where we land um compared to each other and and i think that would be better overall for for the town but first year through so learning as we go i guess i have kind of a bottom line question you may not be prepared to answer it right now but uh if tonight were town meeting and we were talking about this article would you be standing at the pro mic or the con mic i would be standing at me personally we're not the committee room i'd be standing at the con mic because i'm very concerned that the level of spending on top of mwra um and with the budget pressures we are facing over the next few years i understand it was in plan to spend um 13 and a half million dollars on capital but we're signing ourselves up at the outset for a very big number and i understand that some may be excluded debt and some may be water rates but all of that comes out of the same bank account at my house so do you think your committee will will uh give an opinion on this article um no i don't think we will okay because of the order of i think individually we can give opinions but the order was intended to be advisory to you don't expect that to vote okay no and again that was my personal opinion not the opinion that you understood thank you for that i appreciate it i guess on the on the we've heard more new information than what you had at the time on the baseball fields yeah two and a half million and the potential savings of 250 000 um and it's sort of this is one of those tough things it's been in the capital budget it was there for a number of years it's taken off and it was put back on um um what do you have a do you have a feeling on preference for how that might be handled or um so and i i don't know if you you probably maybe touched on it but then there's probably more information it sounds like there's been more studies so we got additional information um we did discuss it at our meeting tonight and i think i think there's support not my personal i would like to do the field i still have the same financial concerns um i think the additional information we got since we issued our report was really two things that we had asked one was is the septic project going to disturb the baseball fields and the answer to that was no right previous discussions earlier on were that implied that it was yes that it was going to disturb it um including we had discussions about well if we're putting the fields under the baseball if we're putting the leach fields under the baseball fields is that even appropriate so we had had that understanding but not confirmation so now we have confirmation they don't touch each other um the second piece of information being the savings i know one email said 250 but then i was a detailed um which i think was 215 rather than 250 if i remember correctly um um understanding that that had to do with largely insurance and earth work and the idea that if you've got equipment there moving um ground it's cheaper if you do it together and that makes sense i don't dispute it um i think there's a lot of projects if we did them together we'd save money right we wouldn't be breaking up the roof on this on this building although we don't know what we're doing at this building um so those are valid reasons potentially to pull the project together i think as a group we came down and we were still concerned with the level of overall spending um and so there wasn't overwhelming support and i think the key factor was that if it if it were disturbing the baseball fields maybe there might have been a different feeling um but would love i would love to do it i just i don't know how to if i'm not in your position but if i were still in this position i'd have a hard time with how much money we're spending that's all but kelly you do have it in your plan it's just out another year correct it's out two more years okay all right in fy29 and i think the distinction being there i and i said this to the committee this is my opinion tonight is if i was certain i was going to do it in fy29 then i'm maybe more apt to just do it now but i know i have a massive water project that we're about to do we're facing overrides in the future and i don't know if i would i can comfortably say if it were me that two years from now i would still be like yep definitely going to happen um that's somewhat i want right personally but and it was um you also made aware which i think we learned when we were having that discussion with abby and others that that two and a half does not actually include the full scope of the project as asked by the athletic coaches because it excludes lighting uh we did not i did not know that i just knew that it was when we asked where the estimate came from we were told it was the 2017 proposal with cost inflation on it um yeah we were provided a breakdown and then clarified and i think the estimate for additional lighting was somewhere in the neighborhood of minimum 500 grand up to one and a half million but it was also to be fair it was the numbers were also updated so it was not just the 2017 with inflation it was a new a full new estimate yeah so abby had sent me a 2.6 ish rounded to 2.6 million which did not have the lighting which did not have the lighting in it and also didn't reflect i understand why any savings from combining the projects correct the lighting i wanted to call out because i think that was a surprise to all of us and words noting that if you guys happen in your plan i think there's probably a request for lighting that needs to go with it it's not in markets okay it's not i mean i mean it's in the plan of the out years yes but we didn't have that information
thank you kelly yeah thank you thank you very much any other earlier okay yeah thank you looking forward i guess just to follow up on sorry i guess i was gonna ask on the computer replacement issue brian to is can you give us any um
just a sense of that what was that in there is that in the 28 capital plan and right now 27 and 28 brian so right so is that correct which project again pm computer replacement at the police the in-car computer replacement is ninety thousand dollars for ninety thousand or a hundred no we met with uh we met with um chief hebert and he wanted we brought that into fiscal 27 and ninety thousand dollars i think right now you have it in 27 and 28 the prior chief had moved it to 28 forgot to take it out of 27 and confirmed for us he had duplicated it and told us to take it out of 27. you have it in both the new police chief just went the other way he wanted it back into on 27. but you have it in 27 and 28. it might be it might be a double count there my last question was just around your prioritization the high medium low just as we look at this um what sort of scale did you use if you could maybe just share a little bit about you know urgency importance uh how did you the difference between high versus high medium is exponential no okay so it was nothing that quantitative okay um right the hope and i think we wrote this in the report is to have a more quantitative basis in the future given it was our first year we asked each member to independently rank the project okay and then we took the the winning right like sure okay majority mode right of of where it landed and then we went through after that we went through them just to make sure no one had a strong feeling right because there's only five of us so that's not very mathematically sound but we went through it just to make sure we agreed with where we ultimately placed it okay we had a given the constraint on amount of money i would say was a heavy focus on life safety and making sure that things that were safety based were first um after that medium high developed so we went high medium low medium high was how we moved things into the plan right so if there was some mediums we felt there were room we moved them to medium high we tried to reflect what the department heads were telling us about how desperate things were and as i said that continued to change so there were a couple that like the two hvacs the public uh safety building the elementary hvac that as we were finishing was like i wish we could have gotten those in there um but that was the thinking it was not quantitative or precise but it was so so like just taking that a step further so the rooftop air handling units is that high based on what you've understood from this is tom this is tom no this would be michael fan michael fan these are not at risk of failing you know what i mean i don't precisely recall the reason it's a high priority like does that mean like they're gonna give out all right did you say what i think they talked to michael after so i may have changed and i thought what i understood brian to say earlier was maybe that michael fan had said they weren't actually going to be ready to do that project understood but like are we setting ourselves up for an emergency where all of a sudden we're forced to do it because they give what like they give out like if there's like a budgetary i mean my understanding was like it was like a logistical thing right right i understand what you're asking i i i would say right we did the best we could with the department heads to say what has to go first the the problem and has always been the problem is each department knows what they want to go first in their department both whether it was cipc or michael and brian tried to balance between the departments becomes um an issue but ultimately it sounds like michael decided there were other facilities projects that that outranked right that i can't recall off the top of my head precisely why that one was was high but i guess the question that i maybe had and maybe i misunderstood brian there was not a question of which ranked higher but it's going to be just a logistical question of like whether you put the money in the budget or not they were for logistical reasons not going to be ready to do those but the response to that is why pull something that's a low priority like the sidewalks in three years and spending so what i guess i'm saying is there's a question like showers and it's going to be like logistically correct correct so logistically you want to prioritize things that you know are presumably high priority and or at risk of failing right well assuming they're fun right but like it's a totally different project with different so i i guess maybe that was my question brian i my understanding was that the middle school air handling was out not because it was not a priority or because it ranked lower than other things but rather because there were sort of logistical concerns about being able to do it whether we allocated money to it or not well it's the it's the uh totality of it because we had a fiscal 27 budget um sorry we had 15 new projects enter into it unexpectedly in a better way to answer that would be that the the plan now accommodates for the middle school hot water system at 359 000 that was injected that was added to every single year that wasn't even in the plan last year so it came down to okay what's more important the the middle school hot water system or something else and what you end up happening is that you have these these projects that quite frankly should have been in the plan and they shouldn't be arising or you know coming into the next year unexpected so what you have to do is balance what you have for free cash what i what i also did was i i rallied in all the department heads and i said if you want these projects you're going to have to come up with surplus capital and you know for example it it what you see in it budget wasn't even in the plan you have a new it director and he brings up the fact that we need these these items so i said to him you may you may need these in the town may need these but they weren't in the plan we got to figure out a way to pay for them so he agreed to move the video um monitoring the management system out a year and he also agreed to close out a two hundred thousand dollar you know wiring project that he's had for seven years so in doing this there's a lot that goes into it i'm sure kelly in her group saw that it's a big puzzle that you put on the table and you probably try to put it together and you try to balance what the town needs versus what the town can afford and what we had this year which was really unusual was the injection of so many new projects and that's why we met with everybody and we said okay something's got to give here you either got to come up with surplus capital or you got to move some of these projects in the case of michael fair there's only so much he can get to in a given year and he does have a lot of projects that are open and he's done a nice job of cutting them down but realistically what's the available resources to do these things in the next year but keep in mind everything on your plan that you're looking at these departments should be expected to get to in july and august not two years from now that's why they're asking for that that's why you see such a backlog is that things were not getting getting addressed right away they were sitting there for two or three years before they were even started so to answer your question there's just so much that goes into a decision for michael fair to move five hundred thousand dollars from 27 out here because there's so many other factors that you need to consider in a lot of and they all they all helped they understood you know and i've said it before when the school wanted the um software which is quite frankly an operating expense and it came out of the blue and i met with the superintendent and christine and i said you you've got to come up with some some close outs we just can't inject these things and and they did they came up with four hundred thousand dollars of close outs that unfortunately that's what california's group and our group have to have to deal with so that's that's the short answer or the long answer on how we move a product project yeah i think two things right for for just comparison right and neither one's right or wrong i think it was good that we came at it from different angles i'm i think the committee less married to because that project was in the plan last year it goes in the plan this year that's ideal that's the way we hopefully when you get a really good solid plan it works that way but for us prior what we thought priority ranking in terms of importance was was what won out so that's fine that we're we have different opinions on it the other thing i would say that i think is on our list of many things we're trying to we would like to have improved upon in the future but i think for you guys i would recommend also asking is whatever plan goes to town meeting i believe that every single one of those projects should have at least high level milestones assigned and shared and even if it's just when do you expect this project to be finished so that we have something to start measuring on um and knowing where where do when projects get requested projects get done right and finished in a timely manner and the only way you can do that is to set out at first how long you think it's going to take because some of these aren't one-year projects they are going to take a while and that's something i think we're missing we have no way of judging right other than well so-and-so has a big balance well that's dependent on the size of the department the size of the project michael's projects are going to be bigger you know so it's something we want to ask for we hope you ask for too so that we can start judging right how well we're doing against this and be able to consider that in future capital appropriations so i have one question that i have yet to see the backup on that i am curious about because i asked the facilities team is what is the difference between district-wide repair replacement sidewalks and middle school roadways and sidewalks like they're both about the same amount and i do not have the cip forms to understand what the difference is there and i'm just curious why they're both in the same year so i we didn't put them in in both years but my understanding from previous discussions was that and the schools have gone back and forth depending on who is here as town manager the philosophy has gone back and forth between requesting a project specifically tagged to a building or school versus district-wide i think louise may have had a belief that you should do district-wide so that you can use the money move on right and start using it up at the next project um at the next school um i don't remember specifically i do on district-wide i remember middle school was very specifically we talked about what the driveway and sidewalk situation was at the middle school specifically the district wide we didn't talk about but i believe that may have been intended for local or we may have talked about it i just don't remember i think that may have been intended for local which also has um some needs right it's been quite a while since it was done so i don't know that the district-wide means that's going to get spread all over it just was in the plan at one point as district-wide and michael intends to use it for for local as my recollection and i don't think we disagreed that either one of those properties aren't in need of it it was just is can it wait versus versus other things or can it wait versus managing your budget any other question so in the future i'm just curious will you guys be moving more towards lumping those or are you more in favor of separating and i'm just wondering like why wouldn't they be combined at some point if they're supposed to well we don't i mean they submit the projects right so i could go either way i mean it depends on probably michael on your philosophy around management of projects and contracting of projects right whether you just label them all district-wide and have a stated intent or you specifically say which which building they go to that's i don't think that's i'm i might take that answer in the in the past what we saw is we would appropriate say local sidewalk clay pit sidewalk separately and what would happen would be that there wouldn't be enough money in one of the appropriations and we were trying to go you know scramble to find funding for one in combining them you you now have one pool of money to do multiple sidewalks where one may be may have an overrun and the other one may have an underrun and it all balances off but we went from separately listing each one of these by location like claper happy hall or whatever to district-wide so we've used district-wide numerous times in numerous different projects uh when we issue bonds they don't have an issue with that whatsoever um you know bundling these things calling you know school repairs you could even you could even have a cip just simply called school building repairs and that could apply to all five schools so every town does it a little bit different you know whalen sort of peeled the onion back and in previous years identifying by location district-wide just cuts down you know the amount of work we have to do a town meeting with labeling everything and it gives the project manager manager more flexibility in getting all these multiple projects done if you were going to do them both i would i would say probably make sense to combine them and just call them district-wide but they were put on the plan separately and i i'd have to go back and look at the history of likely because one was put on yeah one was put on in originally in 2022 the other was put on in 2023 so they were put on at separate times and just kept getting carried forward but if you're ultimately going to do them in the same year i think you add them together question i this is like an old question that we've always talked about is the number of outstanding projects and it looks like there have been great efforts to kind of work through those as you made your list and um priorities i mean it's hard to have a sense of capacity to take on new projects but did you factor that energy we we looked at it in total and that's why i mentioned what was hard to judge is whether or not people were behind on projects because i don't know how long they were supposed to take right right so it was really hard to judge like by based on balance in a given department if they were behind or not and so instead and again because it was short time right we looked at it in total and said there's still 22 million dollars worth of projects that is at least two if not two and a half times sort of a typical year's capital appropriation right i don't know what it should be but i think it i think it should be south of two um and so looking at on a gross basis maybe we we contain that it wasn't as precise as as i think i would like it to be but if we can start putting expectations on projects as we add them i think we can get there it's just going to take a little while thanks good yes all right thank you so thank you thank you thank you thank you yeah thanks everyone thank you yeah and no i i forgot one more i know um phil has asked but we would like to have once you guys are through this season to have a joint meeting of the committees maybe it's a tri board meeting with the select board as well and michael and brian to talk about how we approach this next year right to to learn from this year and make it better next year okay good night good night i was gonna say i'm not envious uh michael uh brian i i think we have nothing further for you tonight um so you could actually bring off if you'd like thank you very much yeah no and and i echo what what kelly did in in um what she said we appreciate the effort they put in they got a late start they did this and as as we've indicated the spirit of recognizing the hard work they did we wanted to take in as many of the recommendations integrate that with the staff and try and balance out what we had previously had in the plan what staff wanted and take in to consideration what that committee did um one of the reasons we advocated for having that committee and i know the select board raised that as well is that that's made up of resonance and have a different perspective and i i know one of the concerns is all the things that are coming down the pike you know we all realize the potential override the future of the town office building there's there's a lot to juggle and you know in one of my other towns i worked with them to create a capital planning committee because again you know we do our best but we also don't live in the town we spend a lot of time here and there's days i feel like i am a resident because i i probably spend more hours here in my hometown but i think you get that additional perspective from having a committee of residents that are looking at some of the projects as well so that's that's why i think it's really important that we we took in their considerations this first year and that we get a jump on this earlier as kelly said next year um you know what do we do right what can we do better and go from there so but thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you good night good night thank you first kind of the box
now it's it's an improved part of joker you know pre so yeah they did it as you said a ton of you know it's the first year there are definitely some challenges but we will looking ahead five years will be in a way better place for having been instituted um i think based on these conversations i think uh i know that we have to get that not necessarily different view but am i think better positioned after this conversation to sort of give an opinion of the ball fields and and certainly have that brief discussion with others but this was the conversation i wanted to understand i wanted to understand what the process was like and i wanted to understand i know cfc sent out that report and i didn't have a chance to read it but i wanted to make sure i really understood the variances between the two what was proposed to the town manager and that's what the town manager proposed i mean i had a question on that just because i'm thinking in my head and i don't i just because i don't recall precisely the 90 000 to refurbish the field what what does that get us how how good a job and when is that done well my understanding was from the last meeting that you know when they came in that it's two they said it would correct the problems with the infield uh you know the bad hops or the right and they said you know they'd hoped it would last 10 years but you're prepared to do it after three years so somewhere between three and ten years it would correct the problem and eventually they would have to do it it was a little unclear to me to that quality delta between the two and a half million and the 90 000 like i thought there was an implication that the 90 000 was right it's a patch right yeah it was unclear i guess how how much of a patch how much of a patch right right was the 90 000 like paint or is it like we put a patch and it's never going to be perfect it's never going to be as as good as brand new but you can use it it's functional and useful and works and we had the engineers on the phone rather than the players so i mean it's really i guess if you were playing on it you'd have a better sense of how much it's improved but even then i think there was an interesting point in your notes um i don't think anyone gave any stats on the number of games that have to be actually removed in a given season or the number of days that they have to move out because of the um the flooding and in fact i think the thing that was said continuously is that the players are embarrassed which is what you included in your notes and and i thought that was interesting because and i get it they're trying to sort of explain how they said that virtually no game i mean not zero games have been moved but they said it's a very small number right they didn't give us a specific yeah i think they've kind of for sure you play on the home fields and you make do with what you've got great and that's that's true yeah if you get a huge you know rainstorm i mean even a good field can get too i guess given that my my general thought is that the capital number proposed it feels high with the number of sort of inclusion manager in bar and company i appreciate that those are the things that we want um you know i a little bit wonder if maybe some of the things that were last minute asks are just that last minute asks and not last minute necessities um but i would think that if they were added in i guess it's hard to say right i guess i don't know if there's an expect right but i don't know if there's an expectation that we might come back and cut a couple things so a couple of things were added i don't know and obviously you have a lot more familiarity with this but this is also another process again i guess for me that million is a lot between the initial first pass through and the second pass through right though that's a very large a very large delta um one of the things just to get back to your 90 000 i guess if it were me personally my own money i would do the first 90 000 and then see how much it did and then you know two or three years from now it's like you know the 90 000 really didn't improve it then you just have the two and a half million occurring a couple years from now yeah right so you can push it out two or three years and say let's try the 90 000 and see where it gets us yeah i think in my mind anything we could do to bring that number down and i guess being very transparent it feels a little bit like the fields the baseball fields represent a lever um a significant lever to get you from 13 million two and a half million down um and and that would be something that i i think at this time would probably be just eight three to eleven three versus the 13. feels better feels better and then some of the difference was excluded debt versus levy debt and there were some other things i mean it wasn't like a huge huge no it was to bring it from 11 down to eight some of that was i think how apparently how the debt was processed i don't think so well she wasn't able really to give us any other large items i mean unless there's no well there were like no there were like 10 400 000 there were like 10 400 000 things yes they added a lot they added a lot but the one thing i will say is when we talk about added i think little to nothing it didn't seem like very many of the things on that chart were added it seemed that they were mostly things that were pulled before most of those items i thought were 28 or 29 to 27 so they were added to this year but i don't think they were brian commented yeah brian commented about the number of projects that were added i guess the chart that we were looking at from sipsi it looked like most of those items were in sipsi's 28 or 29. i think they may have been they may have been in sipsi's outlook they could have been i think brian was saying when i looked at last year's five-year plan there were 15 new projects that were not in the five-year plan and that came in this year yeah but just let me talk about the five and a half difference it wasn't that brian that the brian that the town's budget includes five and a half million that sipsi didn't think could exist at all it includes just not in this year the tipsy did not include for this year correct so they're they're bringing it sure you know i also thought it was very interesting because you know kelly has spent a lot of time on this and so when i asked would you stand at the pro or the con mike i thought maybe she would say well i don't really like everything that's in it but i'd probably vote for it she was at the con light and she's in my opinion she spent certainly a lot more time on this than i have so i respect that position as well and we do have i mean 38 million i mean again and i guess carl i'm not sure like what next steps are but i think and i'm sure brian and michael will watch this but i think if you could maybe to share some of that i think perhaps another review its current amount given again the largest and the difference and what we learned about some of the projects i don't know no i think perhaps i guess what i'm trying to uh maybe delicately say is i don't know that if it's within our purview to say to propose a capital budget that excludes the baseball fields or if it's within the town manager's purview no i think no i think that's that's our purview too well i think i think right now we don't support this with the fields in and if they say keeping the fields in anyway and i guess maybe if there's consensus that's what i would suggest so we don't have voting on this right so we shouldn't i don't think we should we're just discussing fine but let's plan to make that decision okay okay one thing that i maybe should have asked probably before she left is it seems like most of these things are things that there's a general belief should be done and a lot of it just has to do with you know she even said just the the comfort level with the total total bill um did she say anything about how sipsy came up with what they thought was a good total number i think they've there are some some of it's looking at funding so if you look at um i don't know but every year in the warrant we've laid out sort of funding sources and so typically there's like i think i don't know two to two and a half million maybe levy debt and then there's a certain amount but so i think they try to the funding source so i think they try to stay within and respect kind of the funding sources um look at the projects and be able to match funding with those and maintain the policies that we've had in the past so um um so yeah cash capital so i'm looking at the 2025 so um cash capital which is tax 600 800 000 free cash this is one and a half to two million i think it's been at least two million recently levy borrowing
levy borrowing three to five million per year and then stuff that comes from ambulance funds 200 and 300 000 cpa up to 500 000 but and those are kind of the main things um so i think some of it is just i would think that they looked at okay if you've got you're gonna use two million of free cash and then a levy borrowing of five million you're kind of and then maybe another million we're not doing anything tax so cash capital but looking at that you're looking at maybe an eight million dollar um capital budget annually and so i think that was her what what the cipc would have likely and i wasn't there for the meetings but i would think that that would be part of what kind of helped manage their annual spending targets i'm sure they didn't want to come in the last year was that five year yeah the other sort of noticeable difference at least in my mind that i guess i personally would lean towards maybe following um cipc's thought train of thought was the the roads i think that was a reasonable take for them to say look we've never fully used up this money even brian kevin said on the call if i understood it correctly that you're here there's 12 i think that is meaningful money 400 grand right i would also be interested in seeing that that total funding for the roads also reduced um as a one year as a one year as a one year catch-up let's try it i think it's worth experimenting a little bit and if it turns out that actually you know maybe we go from 800 down to 500 or 600 right meet somewhere in the middle and try it out i would love you know love to see the 418 but if we can't hit that maybe we try somewhere in the middle and we just see what happens and then if it turns out they use the extra funding they already have sitting in the account plus everything that got funded then we know but otherwise 12 is significant where you're talking about 800 grand right yeah
so there were just a couple things like that that i think could be tweaked on the agenda okay can i ask a question one question on that and i'm just i'm curious because there's also if they do would that be considered a turn back if they closed out funds from sidewalks if there is a larger balance and then does that convert to free cash no the capital stuff i mean if they
i mean it would have been appropriated and that the capital just goes on for that many years i mean if they were to not or realize that it's the same projects i'm not sure yeah so if they're saying an excess if there's there's just no they just it it's kind of builds until you use it or you say you know what we're we've completed the project and and we have this money remaining and then it could go back in and be but because it's constantly ongoing there's no turn back it isn't it isn't turned back away the operating budget is every year you know it's that year's budgeted money if it's not used by the end of the year it gets turned back and then it's certified for free cash for for the capital project it's and that's why we have so many like in this report that where the cipc noted the outstanding and i think we've done that in higher reports the outstanding number and dollar amount appropriated for capital projects that have been appropriated in prior years and still have not been completed it kind of keeps rolling on until someone says okay this project has been completed and and now we can you can either use it for something else um as he said there um was it the term for that it's not turned backs but it's surplus capital capital closes exactly you know that number reduced last year from the year before and is to say the total and they've got another six hundred two thousand dollars so they've been they've been working on whittling down looking at outstanding
i was just curious if it was because it's surplus capital goes into the we balance out the capital budget with it right so you can use it as a funding source yeah for the next so that's where i was thinking that like helps free up it technically doesn't help free up free cash but right it could like don't use it right okay okay motion to adjourn okay second we don't have to take it all in favor aye aye thank you as always thanks robbie